suncloud,

Lovely post; thanks for sharing

LOL@the wakame being chewy. So true. I bought this huge bag of it at some Asian store where it was really cheap and had never used it. I am used to dulse, which is soft, and nori comes in sheet that are easy to break apart or roll. So I soaked the wakame and what is funny is how much it expands. Whew! But I love fishy-tasting stuff. This is gonna sound gross, but when I was a kid I used to eat fish food. I must have needed the iodine. I remember sprinkling some into my hand in class. It was probably ground up sea veggies. I hope........

regarding algae and spirulina (not seaweed)

who here would walk out to a lake put your lips down to the water an start sucking up the surface green stuff

although for me from a survivalist point of view i would like to know that would be a food option if i was ever lost in the woods

im really on the fence about this stuff

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

For myself personally, I'm kind of on the fence too about spirulina, chlorella, and blue-green algae, all of which are actually bacteria, as I understand it, and not algae. Seaweed is algae.

The bacterias seem a little strong for my system, but maybe that's because I go overboard on them. I like them.

I believe I was incorrect in my last post. Seems chlorella is an algae.

Spirulina is a type of "blue-green algae". But "blue-green algae" are actually cyano-bacteria. This article explains it (last paragraph):

[www.ucmp.berkeley.edu]

Algae are eukaryotes and contain a nucleus. Bacteria, including cyanobacteria, are prokaryotes, and have no nucleus.

There are many different kinds of bacteria, but the cyano-bacteria, like algae and land plants, contain chlorophyll and utilize photosynthesis for their energy source.

I thought this was very interesting:

"The other great contribution of the cyanobacteria is the origin of plants. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells."

So, in other words, whenever we eat the chloroplasts of a green plant, we are eating cyanobacteria.

Spirulina is/has been a common food throughout the globe.

I think my personal difficulty with spirulina, blue-green algae, and chlorella is that I tend to eat too much of it. I do the same with dried fruit, so I avoid it. These are probably perfectly good foods for a lot of people.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2010 07:28AM by suncloud.

As long as you're getting good quality, raw, organic seaweed where they test for toxins, there should be no issue with any of it. It's rare to find it in the stores other than occasionally. I've tried inferior chlorella tablets, for example, and the taste is not the same at all. So stick with known good sources like many of the raw suppliers carry.

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